A Sabbath Day's Journey

​The biblical text certainly has a different perspective. In the gospel reading for this Sunday, the text starts out by saying, "In those days...(Matthew 3:1)." Unfortunately the previous verse referenced Jesus when he was still very young, and the next time we hear about Jesus, he's ready to be baptized by John in the Jordan River.

Many people would be much happier with a reference to something like, "Many days later" or "In those years...." There is an almost constant temptation to look at the text in an historical way.

The problem with that perspective is that we don't see ourselves as having any problem. We may not get all that the text is saying to us, but the problem is not as serious as sin and deserving something like 'temporal and eternal punishment'. The problem can be fixed if we try harder. The problem can be fixed if we just were a bit smarter.

Sometimes we need to admit that we need some serious help. The temptations of Jesus, as they are given in Matthew and Luke, have two different orders. It would be foolish to say that we know without all doubt in what order they occurred. It is just not that important.

More importantly, Jesus went through these temptations for us. At the other end of his life, in a very different environment, Jesus went through all his difficulties in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he also went through all of that for us.

Both of these events, as they are described in the gospel accounts, have a high frequency of what is called the historical present, where the writer switches into the present tense when he is describing these few things that happened in the past. I don't think that is an accident. The difficulties of Jesus should be intimately connected with the difficulties of today's Christians. The body of Christ is a significant figure with tremendous ramifications.

This is not a history lesson. This is a story about the God-man who is for you. This is the God-man who is also with you. These days will never be the same.